Brown Glitter, Brown Glitter, Brown Glitter

Hello, Fireflies!

I don't know why brown gets such a bad rap.  I love it - I am a brunette with brown eyes, and I wear brown polish!

So, today, I have a few different brown glittery - and I think, gorgeous - looks to show you. 

They all start with Mentality Hunger as undies, though most of them didn't need undies.

I like the shift between the copper and gold, and the subtle holo.  It's a little too light for my personal coloring, but it works so well with these glitters.

First up is Rebel Heart by Fanchromatic Nails.  It's listed as a 'cherry red' but it looks more reddish-brown to me.  I think this color is so beautiful, and is one of those shades that looks good with so many other colors.

The reddish hue just makes it glow.

Next, from the now-defunct Feenix, is Mrs. Brown, You've Got A Lovely Daughter.  I feel bad that you can't buy from her store anymore, but you can still find Feenix in blog sales sometimes.  It's too pretty not to show off, anyway.

That subtle hint of red is something I love in a brown polish. 

Another reddish-brown polish is Lilacquer Variations On A Theme.

Apparently, Lilacquer is defunct now, too.  That's the problem with liking Indies - some of them don't stay around very long.  Bummer.

Three reddish-brown glitters, all different.  As of this writing, you can still get Rebel Heart from Fanchromatic Nails, but the rest are out of business.

Bottle shot:  Mentality Hunger, Fanchromatic Nails Rebel Heart, Feenix Mrs. Brown, You've Got A Lovely Daughter, and Lilacquer Variations On A Theme.

Does the fleeting nature of Indies make you want to collect them, or avoid them?  I used to want to own *every* Indie I could, but now there are so many I can't possibly collect them all.

Something a little different Sunday - My... Indies? What?

Don't worry, there are some normal polishes today, too.

Last year, I went to The Makeup Show in Orlando, and there was a booth that sold nail polishes - that you made yourself.  Well, I've been loving Indie polishes for awhile, so I wanted to see if I could do it, too.  I made three.

The first is a wine/brown with red glitter.  I love the color, but it's too easy for the red glitter to get lost.  And. like all three polishes I made, it's pretty gritty.

The good news?  Look how *fantastic* it looks with Color Club Snow-Flakes on it.  I love flakies.  This was part of their 2012 Holiday line, but I understand it's a dupe for Essie Shine of the Times and the like.

This is a green I made, with gold holo glitter.  Something about green and gold together!  Pretty, but again, gritty.  How do Indie makers get the polish to be smooth?

I decided to layer 365 Days of Color Rock Candy over it.  Very festive, if not my cup of tea.  I got this in a grab bag of polishes.  It's pretty, but I just am not that much into shards of glitter.  Maybe in a jelly sammich.

And, finally, a light blue with dark blue and holo glitter.  Grit-tastic, and a little frostier than I'd thought it would be. 

I layered Lilacquer Blueberry Pi over it, but it didn't show up much at all. Whomp-whomp.

So, here's what I learned:
-  Almost every polish can be changed by adding a topcoat glitter.  It's not always changed for good.
- Making polish is super easy.  Making GOOD polish... not so much.

So, hat tip for the Indie makers who take pride in a good product with materials that don't bleed or curl up, that are smooth and pretty.  I'll keep buying them, because I'm not so good at making them.

Indies - fruity goodness

The theme today is that all of the Indies have something about fruit in their names!

First up, some colorful red jelly undies with Chi 24k red.  Love the flecks.  It's a lot like OPI Animalistic and other red flecks.

This Indie had a small marketing problem - they didn't put their name anywhere on the bottle!  I think it's 2Chix Holo Berry, but I could be wrong.  They might have changed their name, too.  People, if you're selling something, put your name on it...

I used Essence Grey-t to be here to do some nail art.  I was going for flowers, but I think they look like zombie/skeleton arms reaching out.  Yeah, that's what they are, that's the ticket.

The next mani starts with China Glaze Immortal, which was released around Halloween.  It's a beautiful medium grey with flecks of blue and purple.  I love grey, and this grey is pretty awesome.

I wanted to emphasize the blue, so I added Lilacquer Blueberry Pi.  I am loving those iridescent blue glitters.  So pretty!

The last look starts with a polish I had to find on ebay - Revlon Royal Cloak.  I love the flakies in this purple polish, but I do wish they were a tad more pronounced.  Still, it has all the wonderfulness of a Revlon polish.

I did a glitter gradient with Hit Polish Pomegranate Ice.  I don't always like to wear red and purple together, but this polish is pretty cool.  The red makes the mani a little more interesting.

So, there you have it - berries, blueberries, and pomegranate.  Sounds almost good enough to eat!

Metallic accents

I love when I'm playing around with a mani, and I add that one touch that just brings it together, or makes it special.  It doesn't happen that often, but when it does, I'm so proud of what I've created.

This mani starts off with a base of CQ Vintage, an unassuming neutral with a secret - it's a subtle color changer.  It's one of those colors that sometimes looks grey, sometimes off-white, sometimes light purple, sometimes beige.  

I was wearing a dress with neutrals, black, and silver/grey-ish purple accents, and I thought these colors would go together in a cloud mani to go with my dress.  OPI Black Onyx for the first layer of clouds, and Essie Nothing Else Metals for the next.  Simple, yet impactful.

 Right hand:

I did a couple of manis that I showed you earlier with Lilaquer polishes.  Here, I took Lilacquer Bakeneko and stamped gold Charlie-Brown-ish zigzags in different orientations all over it with Maybelline Bold Gold. I love how the shimmer just peeks through the stamp.

Here's another gold stamp with Maybelline Bold Gold.  Chain link in different directions over Lilacquer Selkie, Lycanthrope, and Kitsune.  I think it looks especially good over the green and red and seems to bring out even more of the duochrome in them.

Do you like to do whole manis with metallics, or accent with them?

Lotsa Lilacquer!

I just love the intersections between geek girl and polish girl.  Lilaquer has a collection that pays homage to The Fifth Element movie, and I picked up a few.  They are as pretty as they are quirky!

First up, Zorg Industries:

Steel-blue grey with a slight duo-chrome shift, this polish just reads futuristic and industrial.

Leeloo Multipass was the polish that grabbed my attention first in this collection.  I never would have worn orange-pink before, but now I love it.  This is really a very sheer pale orange with a subtle pink shimmer.  Three coats, and you could still see some VNL.

An unexpected star of the show was Roo-Bee Rhod!  This is a real orange/pink duochrome that also evokes a little ruby red.  Two coats is much more opaque than Leeloo, also.

A little splash of Anti-matter of Opinion over Roo-Bee for an accent.  Gorgeous.  This glitter really shows more colors over darker undies, but I love a little subtle bling, too.

Another one of Lilaquer's polishes, Bakeneko, is from a different collection, but I'd heard rave reviews, so I decided to pick it up, too.  It's a Clarins 230-type polish, with the red shimmer, but it's really in it's own class.

One major reason is that Bakeneko doesn't need any undies at all.  The brown/red/green/gold shifts are inclusive in the polish itself.  It would probably shift darker if you did wear it over black, but it doesn't need it.  It's a gorgeous multi-chrome with a great formula.

Last, but not least, is a trio of duochrome topcoats that Lilacquer released in limited edition.  You might be able to find these floating around out there, but I don't know if she plans on bringing them back to her shop or not.  All of these are over a black creme, I believe.

Selkie is a blue/teal duochrome.  To be honest, I have amassed a small collection of these types of topcoats, and I rarely wear them.  There are so many interesting blue polishes out there, I don't often find the need to turn another color into a blue.  I have no complaints about Selkie, though, and it is certainly a pretty topcoat.

Lycanthrope is a gold/green topcoat.  Very pretty, and the slight shift to red is more unique than other topcoats in this vein.

At first blush, Kitsune looks a bit like Bakeneko, but it's more red, without the strong gold shift.  

I love how a topcoat can transform the look of a manicure.  These would also be fun to play with in nail art, changing colors within a nail.

Lilacquer is one of the Indies that has a great grasp on the duo/multi-chrome trend, and her polishes have good formulas, too!  Check her out if you like Indie polishes with a little something different to offer.